Elon Musk and considered one of his “Twitter Recordsdata” writers, Matt Taibbi, don’t appear to be on nice phrases proper now, and that state of affairs most likely isn’t getting any higher after Musk posted then deleted a DM dialog between the 2 of them.
Let me attempt to recap how we acquired up to now. I’m warning you now that it’s a little bit of a large number.
These DMs are actually deleted, however we saved them, if you wish to look:
Picture: Elon Musk, in a now-deleted tweet
Picture: Elon Musk, in a now-deleted tweet
Musk, in what seems to be a Sign chat, asks Taibbi: “You might be employed at Substack?” Taibbi explains that his subscribers pay him and that he was one of many first “Substack Professional” writers, who got an upfront cost for a 12 months in return for giving Substack 85 % of subscription income. Taibbi additionally asks if Twitter will repair a problem the place his Twitter Recordsdata threads had been being deleted, and Musk says that can occur.
You possibly can see the place the DMs had been eliminated by scrolling up this thread or from the tweet beneath, the place Musk claims that Substack was “illegally downloading huge quantities of information to pre-populate their Twitter clone.” (Finest denied an analogous declare over the weekend.)
In the end, the DMs aren’t that salacious. But it surely’s a worrying signal that Musk, the most-followed individual on Twitter, is prepared to simply submit what Taibbi possible anticipated to be personal conversations. It’s additionally a curious wrinkle on Musk’s acknowledged goal to make Twitter DMs encrypted. Encryption isn’t as helpful for anybody who DMs him if he may simply submit a screenshot of the dialog anyway. Alternatively, it could imply that even the proprietor of Twitter can’t simply peek into your personal messages to seize materials for his subsequent thread.